{"id":204,"date":"2009-04-23T21:18:46","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T03:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/?p=204"},"modified":"2009-04-23T21:22:41","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T03:22:41","slug":"the-graveyard-book-by-neil-gaiman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Neil Gaiman has become quite a well known author.\u00a0 With the recent movie Coraline<\/em>, based on the book of the same name by Mr. Gaiman, he is fast becoming a household name.\u00a0 I’ve read a few of his previous efforts, including American Gods<\/em> and his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors<\/em>, both of which I greatly enjoyed.\u00a0 His newest book, a children’s book like Coraline<\/em>, is The Graveyard Book<\/em>.\u00a0 The Graveyard Book<\/em> recently won the The John Newbery Medal for “the most outstanding contribution to children\u2019s literature,” an honor which I think it richly deserved.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to give away much of the plot, but I’m sure that there might be some spoilers in what follows.\u00a0 I would rather describe my general thoughts about the story.\u00a0 The story centers around the childhood of a young boy, Nobody Owens, as he grows up after a tragedy in his family.\u00a0 I imagine it won’t be much of a spoiler, since the title of the book essentially gives this point away, to say that Bod, as Nobody is nicknamed, grows up in a graveyard.\u00a0 I’ve read that Gaiman was inspired on this point by The Jungle Book<\/em>, putting a young boy in a very odd environment in which to grow up.\u00a0 The plot revolves around Bod growing up and learning about the graveyard and the world around him, as well as the mystery surrounding the events that led him to the graveyard in the first place.<\/p>\n

The story is fast paced, with several adventures as Bod discovers new corners of the graveyard.\u00a0 The reader essentially grows up with Bod, learning about both the world in which Bod lives as well as the greater world beyond the physical world in which most people live.\u00a0 We learn that Ghouls, Werewolves, and, while never explicitly stated, Vampires exist in this world.\u00a0 Bod has to learn to navigate both the everyday world as well as this supernatural world in order to survive.<\/p>\n

There are three main aspects of the story that I particularly enjoyed.\u00a0 First, there is a diverse cast of characters and, while we don’t get to know most of them very well, they all add a lot of color to the universe of The Graveyard Book<\/em>.\u00a0 Second, the plot is definitely suspenseful, and at the peak I definitely didn’t want to put it down.\u00a0 It is a real page turner.\u00a0 Finally, the book is meant for children.\u00a0 Maybe not the youngest, but maybe preteens or so.\u00a0 As such, I like that it doesn’t offer a world-view that is all roses.\u00a0 That is, bad things happen to Bod and, even when he does the right thing, it doesn’t always work out for him.\u00a0 And the ending is bitter-sweet.\u00a0 I’ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend this book.\u00a0 It is full of imagination and I expect that most kids would love the world that Gaiman has created.\u00a0 I am torn in hoping that Gaiman further explores the world of the graveyard, but, at the same time, it is maybe better to leave those corners too to the imagination.<\/p>\n

There is a website<\/a> dedicated to the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Gaiman has become quite a well known author.\u00a0 With the recent movie Coraline, based on the book of the same name by Mr. Gaiman, he is fast becoming a household name.\u00a0 I’ve read a few of his previous efforts, including American Gods and his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors, both of which I … Continue reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[380,21,23,22],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-neil-gaiman","tag-supernatural","tag-the-graveyard-book"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}